Singing over the waters
by FPB
Summary: Beauty can kill you. Superhuman beauty will.


SINGING OVER THE WATERS  
  
There is a secret place where mountains rise almost sheer from a blue sea, green all the way to the sky, and dotted with white: the white of the clouds, the white of the seabirds, of the foam as it crashes about their feet, and of the villages that climb their sides or sprawl on a thin beach- line. At these latitudes, the sky is most often blue; but it is not infrequent that it should cloud over and start whipping and lashing the waters, now turned lead-grey, the winds screaming like banshees. And all through the year, fair weather and foul, the dwellers in this secret place hear the song of ancient singers; hear it singing over the waters.  
  
There are many such places in the inland sea, surrounded as it is by knots of mountains, pierced by peninsulae, dotted by islands; but this one is hidden, unreachable by common eyes. A long time ago, and nobody can tell quite how long, a man came and folded space, to have this little corner of the coast wholly to himself. He was not a good man, and the reasons why he hid his little realm were not good; but he loved beauty, and the realm was marked for ever, not only by his evil, but also by his love. From it sailors sailed, whose home nobody knew, and came home with knowledge of a world that did not know them – and with wealth that perhaps was not acquired by trade. They came and went like the white birds of the sea, and stories circulated, some written down in the wisdom-house of their lord, and some were not. The wisdom-house grew and grew, but the people grew no greater; one by one, they died out, as if the spell that had been cast on the coast had too much of death and beauty for mortal men to endure for ever. Last of all died their lord; but as each mortal passed away, the song rose higher and gladder over the sea, as untiring, unseen voices spoke of the wonders and the terrors and the glory that lay just to one side and beyond the gaze of mortals.  
  
Homer sat on that reef centuries later, being blind; and he heard the singing of what does not die, and it gave him the words and the music to embody every grief of mortal life. But few and far between were the voyagers who found that fold in space, and sat above the sea where the hills fell almost sheer, and heard the song; and most did not return, for they had heard that mystery that Homer himself had called the song of the Sirens. Come here,' they sang, 'renowned Ulysses, honour to the Achaean name, and listen to our two voices. No one ever sailed past us without staying to hear the enchanting sweetness of our song--and he who listens will go on his way not only charmed, but wiser, for we know all the ills that the gods laid upon the Argives and Trojans before Troy, and can tell you everything tat is going to happen over the whole world.' And the offer was hardly ever refused: and the two voices sang, song and counter-song, truth and counter-truth, weaving in and out of each other for ever, as mortals grew old and died in the shadow of their beauty. For to them there was no end: as one theme was proposed, another could answer, and deny, and even contradict it. The game, the game of singing and wisdom, went on for ever.  
  
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The last to come there, so far, were a handsome family from England. If you looked at them, you would not think them anything but tourists on a spree, travelling by themselves in a fine estate car with a reversible roof; except that cars should not be able to enter this folded world. But then the family were not what they seemed, except in some features – they seemed arrogant, and were; they seemed discourteous, and were; they seemed rich, and were. But they were not the kind of people their car and dress seemed to proclaim them; indeed, none of them was able to drive a car, and it was only a series of subtle and deceptive spells that did not allow ordinary men to see the magic in them and in their vehicle, whose similarity to an automobile went no further than the outer plates.  
  
As they turned the fold in space, they ceased to need their disguise, and it fell. The car stretched – multiplied – into a half-dozen carriages, each with a house-elf at the reins, each pulled by something invisible even to the wizarding eye, unless it had seen death; and these three had seen it abundantly. The carriages followed each other up the marble-paved path that led to a mansion high above, that overlooked the reef and that was ancient when Homer was young. It had lain empty for centuries, and yet it was still in perfect order. Lucius Malfoy had visited it before, when he had come to reconnoitre the territory; and he had cast a series of Reveal spells on it; but they had shown nothing more than the excellent Service spells cast by wizards dead so long earlier, that their very language had died. Even so, being naturally cautious – and doubly so after recent events – he cast more Reveals and Searcher spells as the carriages approached the front gate; and it was only after he was certain that the mansion was empty, that he commanded his House-elves to enter it and prepare it for human occupation again.  
  
"Hic manemibus optime," he said in satisfaction to himself, looking at the deep firth opening itself under him, and the waves crashing against hidden rocks.  
  
"Yes, father," said Draco Malfoy, "except that we are not sure that Rome is burned at all."  
  
"It is burned, son, believe me. Whatever may have happened to Harry Potter, the Dark Lord is dead."  
  
"Yes," added Narcissa. "You had not been initiated into the Death Eaters yet, as we had. You may be sure that what we felt was his death. And that meant that things could get very complicated, very fast."  
  
Draco smiled at his mother's language. "Complicated" was one way of describing being hunted down by Aurors insisting on placing you in Azkaban for the rest of your life, and incidentally confiscate all your goods.  
  
Draco did not really doubt his parents' perception; and having spent all his life hoping for the Dark Lord's victory, he should have felt frightened or depressed. But from the moment they had crossed the sorcerous barrier, he had felt that those things were unreal, gossamer fancies swept away by something high and wild and uncontrolled that was in the spirit of this coast, of this sea. He knew that he was out of place here, with his well- cut English robes and his pale skin; but he also felt that to leave this place would be to descend, to return to something too flat and ordinary for eyes that had seen it. Verses came to him, unbidden and unthought:  
  
"Come, all the heroes of the earth, good and bad,  
  
Come, the strong men and women of the race of the mortals.  
  
Come, for we are indeed of the beauty devourer of mortals  
  
In whose light you shall stand, if you seek the Divine.  
  
Come, and measure your strength against the great strength of beauty;  
  
And be found heroes indeed, if your power be greater than ours."  
  
And he was not surprised when he found that his father and mother had both sung the same song; not any more than they were.  
  
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They were the only human beings in the secret bay, but neither of them had time to get bored. Lucius discovered that the house in which they were lodged was nothing else than the Wisdom-House of the old wizard who had sealed this bay from the world long ago, and within a few days he had begun on the immense work of deciphering and reading the clay and wooden tablets piled high by the thousand in the ancient storehouses. But his excitement could not match that of his wife on the second day of their stay there, when she went for a stroll on the beach – and came back at a run, as excited as a schoolgirl, her eyes shining.  
  
"Lucius darling! Draco! Do you know where we are? Do you know what this bay is?" and then, without waiting for an answer: "It is the place of the Sirens!"  
  
"Really?" asked Lucius, interested.  
  
"Really. The true ones, the ones that Homer sang about, the winged spirits of wisdom that Odysseus was too cowardly to hear out!"  
  
"Well, this is really interesting. But while I would love to hear their wisdom, I have more than enough to keep me busy here in the House of Wisdom. I have enough magical manuscripts to keep translating and learning for twenty years solid." Then, seeing her disappointment, he added: "I'll tell you what, my love: let's split duties. You listen to the song of the Sirens, I'll keep translating here, and we will compare notes every evening." She smiled and nodded.  
  
Draco was not without his own interest. Young and vigorous, jolted out of his idle British habits by the flight and by his new surroundings, he had taken to exploring the woods that rose up the sides of the mountains surrounding the bay. But what had begun as a pastime had begun to grow into something altogether different. At first it was the music – strange, remote, beautiful, like the hiss of a wooden flute; then the glimpses. Draco became convinced that something magical shared this space with them, hiding as soon as it felt his eyes; and he started searching in earnest.  
  
In this search he started feeling like the beasts that haunted the forest, nervous, springy, alert, fearful – his eyes ever straining, his ears open to all sounds. Soon he knew that he had not imagined his companions; they were everywhere around him, hiding, staring, just out of touch. And it came to him that he could be like them; that he could let them open themselves to him if he grew more like them. Soon he was coming by snatches of speech and sound, music that was not of this earth – and beauty, beauty, beauty. What the ancients had hidden under such words as Nymphs and Dryads was around him, more and more each day as he ran and sang and hid with them; a wild magic of the woods for which human language supplies no words or mood, which speaks out of the knots in the tree trunks and of the holes in their leaves. As the days went on, Draco found that he was falling in love with that which was not human; he knew not why a human being would go and love the hidden things of the wild woods, want to unite with the darkness within the green.  
  
One day it happened, as Lucius continued to translate his prehistoric tablets: all that could be seen was the flash of white, naked skin in the undergrowth, but Draco knew that he had been united with the thing with which he had fallen in love – the thing that lived not in the bodies and minds of men, but in the green and the smell of its flowers and the rot of its warm earth.  
  
Meanwhile, Lucius could not but boggle at what he was finding out. His translation went slowly, as every tablet he found threw new light on magical issues he had considered known and safe: everything, he found, had to be reconsidered, and the pile of paper filed under TRANSLATIONS was increasingly dwarfed by that filed under NEW THOUGHTS.  
  
And more and more Narcissa went to hear the Sirens.  
  
.............................................................................................................  
  
Then came a day when a great west wind blew into the harbour. It rose in the night, and from morning to evening and to morning again it was blowing in like a living wall. It locked the dwellers in: if any ships had still been there, it would have forced them against the beach. But it became clear, as the watchers still looked out to sea, that it was bringing one ship in – a great, ghostly black galleon with unfurled sails, red like blood, manned by a barely seen crew. Alone among them, the young man at the helm was alive – a tall, slim young man with messy black hair and green eyes. He piloted the ship straight on to the sand, beaching it with a jar, and then, unruffled, left the helm and walked down the castle. Before him, shadowy hands made ready a gangplank, and he came down calmly, like a conqueror in a new land. But for all the power he carried with him, he carried himself warily, his eyes taking in every part of the shore with care; for he knew that everything human in this hidden bay was his enemy.  
  
The wind was slowly dying down, and Draco and Lucius, both in armour, came to the shore. Things had changed since they last had met: the former orphan, dubious to most wizards, an object of contempt to the mighty, alone with a few friends and with foes that would terrify anyone, had become the greatest living wizard, Auror and monster-slayer, Dumbledore's heir and adopted son, vanquisher of Voldemort, carrier of all the good wishes and hopes of a generation of wizard-kind. Anyone who stood against him would do well to stand warily, as father and son understood as soon as they saw him.  
  
But neither Draco nor Lucius had remained unchanged, either. As Harry Potter took them in, he saw something that had never been there in their days in Britain: a look in their eyes as if they were always on the unseen, on worlds beyond worlds, and a strange leanness and lightness and length of body – something ascetic, monastic almost. Under their armour, their robes showed a simplicity that would have startled those who remembered the lavish Malfoys of Malfoy Manor. And they seemed not to notice. They moved cautiously around each other.  
  
"What brings you to our home, Harry Potter?" asked Lucius in a courteous tone, yet without welcome. Harry noticed that well enough.  
  
"Two things, my lord of Malfoy. One, to explore and find the lost magical lands of old, still hidden to the eye of the wizarding world."  
  
"That is bad enough, Potter. We value our privacy and don't care to be exposed to the curiosity of others."  
  
"Yes" said Harry simply, feeling full well the near-declaration of war in Malfoy's words. "But what you want is irrelevant. For the other reason is a warrant for the arrest of all known Death Eaters still at large, of whom you and your wife are the last. You, Draco" he said to the younger wizard "don't have to be involved: the warrant is not against you."  
  
"Don't do me any favours," snarled back Draco.  
  
"As you wish." Harry then raised his wand, pointing straight upwards. "And you, captain, crew, and ship, hear my word. For this is the word that frees you from your bondage. You have taken me where only the Flying Dutchman could sail, and your penalty is paid." The wand was brought down in one sudden gesture like a jerk of anger or power; and the great, grim, ghostly galleon behind Harry was seen to slowly move off. And as it cast off moorings and raised its sails again, it slowly, increasingly, just – vanished. One moment it was there, the other not.  
  
With a smile that was more like a growl, Draco addressed Harry: "If I've understood you right, you've just given up your ticket out of here." A brief, interrupted gesture from his father suggested that Lucius objected to this line of conversation.  
  
"Yes, Draco. My only way out of here now is with you, your father, and your mother all subdued. Think about it for a while." Harry's smile was a thing of horror, as full of terrors as the worst of Lucius; Draco flinched instinctively; but as he prepared to fight his last fight, there was a sudden crack. Lucius had Disapparated from that place.  
  
Draco knew that this would not preserve him from a wizard as powerful as Harry now was; and indeed, it took Harry no time at all to make a mighty Reveal. His wand pointed straight at Lucius' new house. But in the interval between the speaking of Harry's Reveal and its achievement, something had happened to the air: it had grown as it were thick, sulphurous, heavy to eye and hand. When Harry tried to Apparate as Lucius had, he found that he could not. Lucius had managed to cast a spell of his own, that made impossible to move across dimensions.  
  
Harry threw himself into the undergrowth, moving straight towards the ill- omened house above him, and Draco threw himself after him. They climbed the steep and stony hills, cracking tree branches as they went. Both their minds were on the house, and as the minutes passed and they came closer, the silence of it grew more ominous. After the Anti-Apparation, no spell had taken effect upon Harry, not even been tried. Both Harry and Draco instinctively understood that this house was the centre of Lucius' magical power, and that he would try something final to be rid of him. Harry wanted to get him before he could; Draco, to be there to help.  
  
Then, suddenly, as Draco and Harry had both come within a few feet of the great white building, the house burst into flames from roof to cellar. The red, obviously magical fire had blossomed in one moment and clearly left no hope that anything human could leave it alive. In a few seconds, it had seized upon the closest tree-tops, and before Harry and Draco could do anything, they were in the path of a wall of flames. A burning, horribly disfigured figure staggered out of the house, and, even from a distance, they could see that it was beyond help. It stumbled, stumbled again, and fell; the last they would see of Lucius Malfoy.  
  
And as the fire was raging through the wood, Draco threw himself at Harry, one handful of flames in either hand, looking no longer like the pale hothouse flower that had blossomed in Malfoy Manor far away, but like some supernatural, ivory-white killer shrike, borne, driven, possessed by an energy that had nothing more human about it. Harry felt the power bite him even through his spell-armour, beginning with his legs, and urgently threw more enchantments at himself to stop being devoured. And then the white creature was on him, pinning him down with talons of something more than steel, its mouth open to howl – no longer a human howl, but a strange, high, terrible, unhuman music like a wind of death, a glass-like concord of discords like the anger of the powers of the world. Harry could not free himself, but his enemy could not rip apart a form so protected with spells; for, in the days after the fall of Voldemort, nearly every wizard and witch who had it in their power to cast a spell of protection and good fortune had cast it on Harry in gratitude, and it can be doubted whether there was one wizard since Merlin so well protected against those who hated him. But the fury of the creature only grew with its inability to hurt its enemy, and its music grew oppressive, deafening, frightful. Harry could no longer see anything beside the white, shining face, fanged, unmortal, nor hear anything beside its music of hate, nor feel anything beside weight and pressure and inability to move. And still the sound and light grew and grew... till flesh and blood and nerve and bone could stand no more. There was one last burst of light and sound that simply shattered all of Harry's senses, and would have killed any wizard less well-defended; and when he slowly crawled, bit by bit, out of the unconsciousness that had overcome him, he felt no more weight on him, and no supernatural white foe howling music. Draco had gone, swallowed up in the songs of the ocean, whose power he had called; singing his song of hatred before the green cliffs eternally and in vain.  
  
Harry knew now what he had been sent here for: not to arrest the Malfoys, but to save them. He had already failed with two of them. He looked sadly at the immortally beautiful green cliffs above him, with their white palaces and white birds flying about their tops; he looked at the sea, dark like wine, great, musical, intoxicating. He made his way down the path to the reefs where the music sounded loudest and clearest, where he had seen three figures – one human; and he removed his armour as he went.  
  
"Narcissa? Narcissa Black Malfoy?"  
  
He caught the slightest turning of the golden head, and then a short, impatient jerk, as though of dismissal. He did not matter enough to her to look at him, compared to the immortal singers on the shore.  
  
"Narcissa, it is Harry. Don't you remember me?" he asked, almost in a pleading tone.  
  
The answer came flat and uninterested: "I remember everything."  
  
"Narcissa listen to me. I have just realized what I was sent here for. It was not to arrest you. It was... you are in danger here, Narcissa. You are in danger of your life and soul."  
  
An indistinct sound came from the woman before him, as the bird-spirits kept singing their immortal part-song. It could have been a sob, or a laugh.  
  
"Narcissa, listen to me. You should never have come here. This place kills people. It has devoured your husband and your son. I did not have to do anything; they destroyed themselves by its power. For the sake of Merlin, Narcissa, come with me!"  
  
Then came the response he had sought.  
  
"Leave me alone. LEAVE ME ALONE, Harry Potter!" she said in a voice so shrill it was almost a scream. "What can you offer me, anyway? What have I left out of here? My husband and son are dead, my friends are dead or in Azkaban..." Her voice grew softer, and, if it could be thought of Narcissa, almost pleading. "Leave me, Harry. I have to hear them out, to hear their wisdom. Everything I ever loved has died... and I must understand, understand the reason why, or die."  
  
Harry let go of her. For the last time, she looked back, over her shoulder; and, for the first time, he saw her as she was. That once royal beauty, whom, one memorable week-end, he had held in his arms, was not only wasted, but showing the certain traces of impending starvation. She would not rise from this place again: the immortal song of beauty and wisdom had grappled and seized her soul. It was true enough that she had nothing left to go back to... but it was something else that was holding her here. And if Harry had not had an experience of his own, he might have stayed and died too. But long ago, Harry had learned a terrible lesson:  
  
Yes and no,' said Dumbledore quietly. It shows us nothing less than the deepest, most desperate desire of our hearts. You, who have never known your family, see them standing around you. Ronald Weasley, who has always been overshadowed by his brothers, sees himself standing alone, the best of all of them. However, this mirror will give us neither knowledge or truth. Men have wasted away before it, entranced by what they have seen, or been driven mad, not knowing if what it shows is real or even possible.  
  
It was a wrench. The beauty of the song, cross and counter-cross, kept calling back to him... He rose, and started walking, as the song seemed to soar higher and higher over the waters, forcing one leg after the other. "Beauty devourer of mortals," said Harry sadly, his back on the doomed woman with whom he had lain, once, long ago; for he, too, had heard the song of the secret land as he landed. But he turned from that place, and walked out of its special sunlight and into the world of mortals. 


End file.
